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Finding Aid to the Donald Appleyard Papers, 1954-1982, bulk 1966-1982
BANC MSS 83/165 c
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Table of contents
Collection Title: Donald Appleyard papers
Date (inclusive): 1954-1982,
Date (bulk): bulk 1966-1982
Collection Number: BANC MSS 83/165 c
Creators :
Appleyard, Donald
Extent:
Number of containers: 11 cartons, 2 boxes, 1 oversize box, 1 oversize folder
Linear feet: 14.75
Repository: The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Abstract:
Correspondence, research materials and publications by Donald Appleyard, a professor in the University of California, Berkeley
College of Environmental Design.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information
on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Collection is open for research.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head
of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000. Consent is given on behalf of The
Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright
owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. See:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research
and educational purposes.
[Identification of item], Donald Appleyard Papers, BANC MSS 83/165 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
There are no alternate forms of this collection.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Appleyard, Donald--Archives
University of California, Berkeley. College of Environmental Design
Landscape architects-- California
City planning-- California
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (Calif.)-- Planning
Landscape assessment
University of California, Berkeley. Environmental Simulation Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley. College of Environmental Design-- Faculty
Landscape architecture
Environmental laboratories-- California-- Berkeley
Environmental psychology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Faculty
Faculty papers.
Photographs.
The Donald Appleyard Papers were given to The Bancroft Library by Sheila Appleyard on June 21, 1983.
No additions are expected.
Portions of this collection are arranged to the folder level, while others are arranged to the container level.
Processed by Pennington Ahlstrand with Jack Doran, Jae Mauthe, Jamie Nguyen and Spencer Taylor in 2011.
Donald Appleyard, who spent a major part of his life energies making cities and neighborhoods safe and livable, died in Athens,
Greece, September 1982, an innocent victim of a senseless, speeding automobile. Appleyard was 54 years old. Appleyard, Professor
of Urban Design, was a member of the faculties of the Departments of City and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture
at the University of California, Berkeley.
A native of England, he was educated there as a surveyor and architect. Later he studied city planning at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. Subsequently, he became a member of the M.I.T. faculty and taught there for six years.
Over the years, his interests became focused on the livability of cities and neighborhoods, particularly upon streets. Appleyard
was that rare combination of innovative path-breaking academic researcher and quiet, insistent activist, professional, intent
on getting things done--things that made cities better places for people to live. He was a person of ideas-- especially concerned
with expanding the scope of urban design to encompass thinking from the social sciences.
Most of all, Donald Appleyard was a humanist urban planner who loved to work with people on their environmental problems,
a person concerned about community and public life. Recognized the world over as such, he was called upon by people and professional
colleagues to help them make better urban environments.
Appleyard's research dealt in large measure with subjects including the effects of traffic upon the lives of local residents,
the physical characteristics of cities as fulfilling and joyful places to live, how to manage traffic in residential areas,
conservation of neighborhoods and the like. He was an innovative and creative researcher in exploring these interests, which
accounts for his considerable impact on the field. His methods involved the development of new survey techniques to relate
people's perceptions and values to the design process and to resulting physical environments. He was largely responsible for
the pioneering environmental simulation laboratory which permits testing and comparing different environments and designs
by use of models and video photography where viewers can experience a simulated environment as if they were in it. Examples
of the simulation laboratory work include: making films of the effects of future high-rise development on the San Francisco
skyline, demonstrating the neighborhood impacts of alternative transportation technologies, and evaluating the impact of a
controversial interstate highway.
Professor Appleyard's work was known throughout the world. He was invited to lecture at universities in more than forty countries.
At Berkeley, his teaching was central in shaping the education of a new generation of professionals sensitive to the physical
environment as people experience it.
He authored more than one hundred articles and professional reports and a host of books, including The View From the Road
(1963), Planning a Pluralistic City (1967), The Conservation of European Cities (1979), Improving the Residential Street Environment
(1981), and Livable Streets (1981). Of his writing, Grady Clay, Editor of Landscape Architecture magazine, calls his book
Livable Streets, "by far the most thorough and detailed work on urban streets to date, offering precise ammunition for activists
and citizens for years to come... as a resource for the future, it is a classic." At the time of his death, Appleyard's research
and writings were taking him in new, but related, directions, including a major work on the study of environmental symbolism.
Professionally, Appleyard was active in projects that ranged from detailed neighborhood planning and design, such as the Berkeley
street diverter program, to plans at a citywide scale, such as Ciudad Guayana in Venezuela. He was a major contributor to
the San Francisco Urban Design Plan, had worked in Africa and Mexico, and at the time of his death was on leave working in
Athens on neighborhood planning.
Over the years, he had been chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and had received numerous awards, not the
least of which was a Fulbright Senior Fellowship to Italy in 1975, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Graham Foundation Fellowship.
He was at the height of his productive, creative years at the time of his death.
Donald Appleyard is survived by his wife, Sheila, and their four children: Justin, Moana, Bruce and Ian. He is survived, too,
by thousands of people who may not have known him but whose environments and lives are more joyful and satisfying because
he helped to plan them--humanely.
Allan B. Jacobs C.C. Cooper-Marcus T.G. Dickert
--University of California: In Memoriam, 1987
Scope and Content of Collection
The Donald Appleyard Papers, 1954-1982, consist primarily of materials documenting Appleyard's career as a Professor in the
College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley and as a consulting urban planner. Much of the collection
relates to his involvement in the design of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) in the early 1970s, his seminal work "Livable Streets"
about designing for community and materials relating to his teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley. The
collection also contains personal and professional correspondence. The collection is arranged at the series level only, with
minimal arrangement of materials within the individual series.